Thursday: Easy flight into Albuquerque, arriving about 11 in the morning.
I never tire of the drive up 25 to Santa Fe. It is about an hour of a vast changing landscape and deep skies. Big clouds in bullying competition over the mountains foretell of summer thunderstorms later.
The first stop: Bobcat Bites out on Old Las Vegas Highway for one of their unparalleled green chili cheeseburger. Medium rare. No fries-no room! Ahhh. Now we have truly arrived.
I reached the ridge of Chimney Rocks just about the time the earthquake was shaking up Northern Virginia. My sister in Hawaii texted me. Ah, the 21st century!
That is Black Mesa at the upper, far left edge of the horizon. A camera cannot capture the vastness and grandeur. You'll just have to go there. Call Porter.
That was truly a memorable day. Amazing. I can't wait to go out with Porter for another history tour!
Thursday: A little shopping, a lunch date at La Casa Sena with John Schaefer of Peyton Wright Gallery, a little more shopping. Stop in to Peyton Wright to see the beautiful show of Stanton Macdonald-Wright's colorful "synchromies." Lyrical. Mesmerizing.
Thursday night, we had to get out of denial that our return flight on Saturday would have us landing in Baltimore about the same time as Hurricane Irene. Easy to forget a hurricane when you are waaaaay our west with the biiiiig blue skies. I moved our ticket to an earlier flight on Saturday. However, the dire storm predictions kept mounting. Which meant that...
Friday: 6am I am on the phone with Southwest booking us on a 3:50 flight out of Albuquerque that afternoon. Even if the storm changed course and was less of a problem than predicted on Saturdy, the airport/ flight logistics would probably get pretty complicated. Better to beat it out of Dodge ahead of the stampede. So, Skip and I packed up. I finished packing while he taught the last day of the workshop. I picked him up at noon, cutting the class short by a few hours, and we said our good-byes. Off to Albuquerque.
So our visit to My Favorite Place was cut short by Irene, and interrupted by a stomach bug. At least I missed the earthquake. Oh, well.
It was still a week in My Favorite Place and that's pretty wonderful.
I never tire of the drive up 25 to Santa Fe. It is about an hour of a vast changing landscape and deep skies. Big clouds in bullying competition over the mountains foretell of summer thunderstorms later.
The first stop: Bobcat Bites out on Old Las Vegas Highway for one of their unparalleled green chili cheeseburger. Medium rare. No fries-no room! Ahhh. Now we have truly arrived.
Friday: The big fishing day on the Pecos with The Reel Life guide extraordinaire, Ben Casares. Skip had fished with Ben a couple years ago and we all had such a great time. This trip we went further upriver to Cowles to a gorgeous stretch of the river in a canyon bordered by wildflower meadows, moss-covered cliffs and towering ponderosas. Skip was on the water all day with Ben and I hiked the lovely trail along the river. There is a cool, mossy lushness here. Overcast, passing thundershowers, perfect for fishing. The fish were less enthusiastic than we were, but there were enough willing to play along to keep it interesting. It is always a good day on a trout stream.
Saturday: The world famous Indian Market. It was a zoo. So crowded you couldn't get up to see any of the artists' wares. Madness. Now, I confess a real jones for good Native American jewelry, but there were hoards (or herds!) tacky fat Anglos of a certain age draped in way too much ersatz Indiana that I had to get the hell outta there. It was turquoise overdose! No disrespect to the artists: I just couldn't get close enough to see the good stuff.
So we headed up to Taos to see our friend Lindsey Enderby at Horse Feathers. The Last Real Cowboy and a True Gentleman. If you are in Taos you must stop in Horse Feathers . You will find some piece of retro authentic cowboyana that you never knew you needed! Lindsey will have it! Hats, chaps, boots...spurs! Everything but the horse. And he'll even throw in a good tall tale or two.
I also made a stop in one of the best bead stores I have ever shopped with the most unlikely name of Thunder Lizard. (That's what ancient people called dinosaurs, and they sell fossils, too...) I discovered them in the spring and have been biding my beads until I could get back and restock. Unfortunately, they do not have an online store. Or maybe that's good...I'll just have to go to Taos!
Sunday: Food Poisoning. I'll spare you the details.
Monday: Skip started his workshop at Valdes Art Center Monday morning. I spent the day recovering.
By Monday evening I was beginning to feel human. I had lost a full day of hiking, but I was so weak and wobbly that I could barely muster disappointment.
Tuesday: Feeling better. I had missed one day of hiking and I was not going to miss out on another! I had a hike scheduled with Georges Wednesday so I knew I needed to get my land legs back. It was a beautiful day, after a couple days of heavy rain, so I headed up to Ghost Ranch. It was the best medicine for me.
The sky was so clear after all the rain that the colors were spectacular. I have often been up there with a late summer haze. Not today. Electric! The sky really is that blue and the rocks really are that red. I hiked the Chimney Cliffs trail, which is about 3miles round trip. Perfect to break in on. It is called an easy trail, but unless you are fully acclimated to the altitude, any trail can feel more challenging. The hike takes you up to the ridge, putting you at eye level with the Chimneys, so it is pretty much a steady climb. I lingered at the top, enjoying the expansive views of Miss O'Keeffe's world. From the top, you could see her little adobe house that is off limits to the public. I can only imagine waking up every morning here, watching the stars come out over Cerro Pedernal...it is an amazing piece of real estate!
I reached the ridge of Chimney Rocks just about the time the earthquake was shaking up Northern Virginia. My sister in Hawaii texted me. Ah, the 21st century!
The view down the north side of the cliffs from the ridge, Pedernal on the horizon. Look at the color of Abiquiu Lake, real turquoise!
Wednesday: Georges took us on a hike up at the top of Hyde Park Road, through pine and aspen forests, across alpine meadows. Breezy and shady and green: the opposite of my Chimney Rocks hike. The Aspen woods are spectacular, the white bark and shimmering leaves glowing in the sun, the breeze whispering that unique aspen hush.
Later that afternoon, Sue and I met up with Porter Swentzell for the Tewa Circle Tour. Porter is the son of famous sculptor Roxanne Swentzell and a Native of the Santa Clara Pueblo. He has started a guiding company,Tsikunu Tours specializing in the history and culture of the Tewa Pueblos of Northern New Mexico. I had been wanting to get to the pueblos and this was the PERFECT way to go. Porter's knowledge is so broad and so deep, and so personal that there is no better guide to give you insight into the fascinating, complex, and mostly hidden life and history of the pueblos. We did a driving tour north out of Santa Fe, stopping to walk around at the San Ildefonso plaza. We continued through the landscape, touching in on the lay of the land and its' history, through five pueblos. We stopped out near Los Alamos at a scenic overlook that had a spectacular vista of the Rio Grande and the expansive 360 horizon. Porter explained how each Pueblo counts their world in sacred concentric circles from the center of the plaza, out to four significant mountain landmarks in the four directions. These concentric circles overlap like the rings around raindrops. This is Black Mesa, one of the cardinal points for his home pueblo, Santa Clara.
Porter describing the sacred circles of pueblo geography to Sue.
That was truly a memorable day. Amazing. I can't wait to go out with Porter for another history tour!
Thursday: A little shopping, a lunch date at La Casa Sena with John Schaefer of Peyton Wright Gallery, a little more shopping. Stop in to Peyton Wright to see the beautiful show of Stanton Macdonald-Wright's colorful "synchromies." Lyrical. Mesmerizing.
Thursday night, we had to get out of denial that our return flight on Saturday would have us landing in Baltimore about the same time as Hurricane Irene. Easy to forget a hurricane when you are waaaaay our west with the biiiiig blue skies. I moved our ticket to an earlier flight on Saturday. However, the dire storm predictions kept mounting. Which meant that...
Friday: 6am I am on the phone with Southwest booking us on a 3:50 flight out of Albuquerque that afternoon. Even if the storm changed course and was less of a problem than predicted on Saturdy, the airport/ flight logistics would probably get pretty complicated. Better to beat it out of Dodge ahead of the stampede. So, Skip and I packed up. I finished packing while he taught the last day of the workshop. I picked him up at noon, cutting the class short by a few hours, and we said our good-byes. Off to Albuquerque.
So our visit to My Favorite Place was cut short by Irene, and interrupted by a stomach bug. At least I missed the earthquake. Oh, well.
It was still a week in My Favorite Place and that's pretty wonderful.
